Re: installing only the newly (re)built modules

[Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>]

Alexy Khrabrov wrote:
> Well, fast -- it depends!  :)  My Crusoe tablet, Compaq TC1000, can
> use any break it gets...  And generally, the beauty of a make system
> is not to do any extra moves.  Since it already knows what to build,
> why not let it install just that?
The answer just came to me, because you may have deleted creation of a 
module, and make doesn't know how to get it out of the directory. So the 
modules file is rebuilt from zero, rather than put in a lot of logic 
which might result in problems.

Think moving a driver from module to built in, what happens if you 
modprobe the module? Or if you delete a module totally because some 
other module does your hardware better. Think network and sound on that, 
particularly. You do NOT want the old "works-badly" module around ready 
to jump in when something you overlooked loads it.

Just a case of preventing problems all at once rather than trying to be 
clever. I would think building a kernel on that hardware would take 
longer than the useful life of the release. I used to build 1.2.13 on a 
slow machine, and that took days.

In any case you have an answer, it's because being clever is hard.
>
> Cheers,
> Alexy
>
> On 1/10/07, Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com> wrote:
>> Alexy Khrabrov wrote:
>> > The 2.6 build system compiles only those modules whose config
>> > changed.  However, the install still installs all modules.
>> >
>> > Is there a way to entice make modules_install to install only those
>> > new modules we've actually just changed/built?
>>
>> Out of curiosity, why? I've noticed this, but the copy runs so fast I
>> never really thought about it as an issue.
>>
>> -- 
>> bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
>>    CTO TMR Associates, Inc
>>    Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979
>>
>


-- 
bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
  CTO TMR Associates, Inc
  Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979